"If one prosecutes a war, in a place where innocents have no place safe
to flee to, and no way to leave, then that becomes murder."

Let's stop the utter nonsense that Israel has anything to do with Judaism.

These are gangsters pure and simple. - See more at:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/israelpalestine/the-israeli-lying-machine.html#sthash.OoZXoL3B.dpuf

First class criminals need first class liars.

Israel has got them. They are a true wonder to behold.

By the way, this is what the Torah says about today's events:

"If one prosecutes a war, in a place where innocents have no place safe
to flee to, and no way to leave, then that becomes murder."

Let's stop the utter nonsense that Israel has anything to do with Judaism.

These are gangsters pure and simple. - See more at:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/israelpalestine/the-israeli-lying-machine.html#sthash.OoZXoL3B.dpuf

The
Torah says, "If one prosecutes a war, in a place where innocents have
no place safe to flee to, and no way to leave, then that becomes
murder."http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/israelpalestine/the-israeli-lying-machine.html

First class criminals need first class liars.

Israel has got them. They are a true wonder to behold.

By the way, this is what the Torah says about today's events:

"If one prosecutes a war, in a place where innocents have no place safe
to flee to, and no way to leave, then that becomes murder."

Let's stop the utter nonsense that Israel has anything to do with Judaism.

These are gangsters pure and simple. - See more at:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/israelpalestine/the-israeli-lying-machine.html#sthash.OoZXoL3B.dpuf

[Note:
The population in Gaza is.was, 1, 816,000. Israeli has called up a
total of 86,000 troops. That is, roughly, one soldier for every 21 people in Gaza.
Talk about mass murderers! ...bw]

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Bay
Area United Against War Newsletter

Table
of Contents:

A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONSB.
ARTICLES IN FULL

C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS

D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Historic Film on Palestine Liberation Struggle "We Are the Palestinian People"Wed. Aug. 13, 7pm2969 Mission St. at 26th St., SFnear 24th St. BART; #14, 49 MUNIWith discussion led by Richard Becker, author of “Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire.”

Made
in 1973, this film includes an excellent chronology of the events
leading to the establishment of the state of Israel by the Zionist
forces utilizing rare historical footage. It explains the role of
Britain and the U.S. in establishing and supporting the Israeli state,
and documents the long history of resistance by the indigenous
Palestinian people to colonial settlement and expulsion. Beginning with
the rise of political Zionism, the film goes on to describe the Arab
rebellion against Turkish rule during World War I, the general strike
and armed rebellion against British control of Palestine in the 1930's,
the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 and afterwards, as well as
the development of the Palestinian liberation movement following the
1967 Six Day War. Produced by CineNews, 1973, 55 min.

August 16 Gaza Port Blockade Against Israeli Ship

Israelis
aren't the only ones who know how to blockade. They use military force
to impose their illegal blockade of Gaza. We use moral force and the
power of people mobilized to act for justice and peace.

As
the Zionist genocidal war against the Palestinian people continues unabated,
workers around the world are stunned by the death and destruction rained down
in Gaza. Transport workers, because of our key position in the global economy, have
the power to stop the wheels of the Israeli war machine, the power to stop it
dead in its tracks.

In
2009, dockworkers in Durban, South Africa refused to unload the Israeli ship
Johanna Russ to protest what they called “apartheid Israel’s massacres in
Gaza”. The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union then called on
other unions to follow their exemplary solidarity action with the oppressed
Palestinian people.

Then,
dockworkers in Oakland, California of the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) honored a mass picket line of1,200 port demonstrators against a Zim Lines ship protesting the Israeli
army’s killing of humanitarian aid workers on the Freedom Flotilla to
Gaza.In 1984, ILWU had boycotted a
South African apartheid ship.

Saturday
August 16 is the date set for the next protest against an Israeli Zim Lines
ship in the port of Oakland.This date
commemorates the Tripartite South African government killing of 34 striking
miners. Known as the Marikana Massacre, it has become a seminal event in the
history of South African working class struggles.

The
Palestinian General Confederation of Trade Unions has appealed to workers the
world over to refuse to handle Israeli goods. The TWSC calls for action on
August 16 in solidarity with Palestinians and striking South African workers.
Picket Israeli ships, planes and Zim Lines offices. If we can stop the Israeli
capitalists’ profits, even for a day, we send a powerful message to the racist Zionist
regime that we will not oil their bloody war machine.An injury to one is an injury to all!

Mexican Consulate: 532 Folsom Street, San
Francisco, CA (between 1st & 2nd) Sponsored by Bay Area Radical
Women, Yo Soy 132, and Freedom Socialist Party.Protest the
wrongful imprisonment of Nestora Salgado, a U.S./Mexican indigenous
woman held in prison on trumped up charges. Salgado helped the poor in
her Guerrero hometown to form a defense squad to protect themselves from
narco-traffickers and their gangs. This angered corrupt politicians and
mining companies who are colluding to drive the local people off their
land. Nestora represents hundreds of people in self-defense groups who
have been jailed for defending their communities against powerful,
politically connected criminal cartels.

August 21 is the one year anniversary of Nestora’s incarceration.Mexican
Consulate: 532 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA (between 1st &
2nd) Sponsored by Bay Area Radical Women, Yo Soy 132, and Freedom
Socialist Party.Endorsers include American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees, Local 3299, University of California,
Chiapas Support Committee, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
(LCLAA), SF, Latin-American and Latino/a Studies Department, CCSF;
Socialist Action; National Lawyers Guild and more.

To endorse or for more information, contact Bob at 415-864-1278 or FreeNestora.SanFrancsico@gmail.com www.freenestora.org

Click
here to see the current Freedom Socialist. To subscribe to the FS by
postal mail, email, or audio CD, visit here or send $10 for one year or
$17 for two to Freedom Socialist, 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA
98118.

To subscribe to the FS by postal mail, email, or audio CD, visit here.Please contribute to sustain our work. You can donate now via PayPalTo
see the booklist at Red Letter Press or to find out more about the
Freedom Socialist Party, go to www.socialism.com, or reply to this
message. We would love to hear from you! Friend on Facebook | Forward to a friend Bay Area Freedom Socialist PartyKeep up with FSP's activities

No Aid to Apartheid Israel! BDS!

(With 200 initial signers)

On
July 12, 2014, Gaza civil society issued an urgent appeal for
solidarity, asking: "How many of our lives are dispensable enough until
the world takes action? How much of our blood is sufficient?"

As
Jews of conscience, we answer by unequivocally condemning Israel's
ongoing massacre in Gaza, whose victims include hundreds of civilians,
children, entire families, the elderly, and the disabled. This latest
toll adds to the thousands Israel has killed and maimed since its
supposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

In response to this crisis, we urgently reaffirm our support for a ban on all military and other aid to Israel.

In
1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War with his
famous declaration: “For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling
under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

Today, *we* cannot be
silent as the “Jewish state" -- armed to the teeth by the U.S. and its
allies -- wages yet another brutal war on the Palestinian people.
Apartheid Israel does not speak for us, and we stand with Gaza as we
stand with all of Palestine.

In the face of incessant
pro-Israel propaganda, we heed Malcolm X's warning: “If you're not
careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being
oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

For
Israel's relentless war on Gaza is no more an act of "self-defense"
than such infamous massacres as Wounded Knee (1890), Guernica (1937),
the Warsaw Ghetto (1942), Deir Yassin (1948), My Lai (1968), Soweto
(1976), Sabra and Shatila (1982), or Lebanon (2006).

Rather, it
is but the latest chapter in more than a century of Zionist
colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleaning, racism, and genocide --
including Israel's very establishment through the uprooting and
displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba.
Indeed, eighty percent of the 1.8 million people sealed into Gaza are
refugees.

Like any colonial regime, Israel uses resistance to
such policies as an excuse to terrorize and collectively punish the
indigenous population for its very existence. But scattered rockets,
fired from Gaza into land stolen from Palestinians in the first place,
are merely a response to this systemic injustice.

To confront
the root cause of this violence, we call for the complete dismantling of
Israel's apartheid regime, throughout historic Palestine -- from the
River to the Sea. With that in mind, we embrace the 2005 Palestinian
call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which
demands:

* An end to Israeli military occupation of the 1967 territories

* Full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel

* Right of return for Palestinian refugees, as affirmed by UN resolution 194

The
missile shield system was developed jointly by the United States and
Israel and is said to have intercepted dozens of rockets fired from Gaza
during the conflict that began July 17. The system uses advanced
tracking technology to determine if a rocket is headed for a population
center; if it is it destroys the rocket mid-flight.

Israel and Hamas agreed late Monday to an Egyptian-sponsored 72-hour cease fire.

At a news conference Friday, Obama underscored Israel's right to defend itself and noted American support for the Iron Dome.

"And
so, not only have we been supportive of Israel in its right to defend
itself, but in very concrete terms -- for example, in support for the
Iron Dome program that has intercepted rockets that are firing down on
Israeli cities -- we've been trying to cooperate as much as we can to
make sure that Israel is able to protect its citizens," Obama said.

An Israeli airstrike Sunday killed 10 people outside a U.N. school in Gaza, prompting some of the harshest American criticism of Israel since the conflict began.

State
Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement that “the United
States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling” and urged Israel to
do more to “avoid civilian casualties” and to protect U.N. facilities.

Before
the cease-fire announcement Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh
Earnest said the United States continues to push for a cease-fire and
that it has expressed its concerns about the Israeli military living up
"to their own standards" about protecting civilians.

"We do continue to believe that the violence in Gaza should end as soon as possible," Earnest said.*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

2) Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict

GAZA
CITY — Inside the Health Sciences Library at Al-Shifa Hospital here, a
small team spent the war crunching numbers. Stuck to their laptops were a
statistician, a graphic designer, a data-entry specialist and an issuer
of death certificates, some of whom spent nights sleeping in their
straight-backed chairs.

By Tuesday, this is what they had come up
with: 1,865 “martyrs” from “Israeli aggression” since July 6: 429 under
age 18, 79 over 60, 243 women. The Palestinian Ministry of Health does
not categorize victims as civilian or combatant, but others do: The
United Nations — which had a lower death toll, 1,814 — said that at least 72 percent were civilians, while two Gaza-based groups put the percentage at 82 (Al Mezan Center for Human Rights) and 84 (the Palestinian Center for Human Rights).

Israel
has a very different assessment. The military says it took the lives of
900 “terrorists,” but it did not provide specifics beyond the 368 cases
listed in 28 entries on its blog. Politicians have been saying that 47
percent of the dead were fighters, citing a study by an Israeli counterterrorism group
that is impressive in its documentation, using photographs and Internet
tributes, but analyzes only the first 152 casualties, when the assault
was exclusively from the air.

Even
as the war appears to draw to a close, the battle over casualty
statistics rages on. No other number is as contentious as the ratio of
civilians to combatants killed, widely viewed, including in Israel, as a
measure of whether the commanders in the field acted proportionately to
the threat posed by militants — or, in the eyes of Israel’s critics,
committed war crimes.

“There are big problems in the numbers
because there are such huge numbers,” said Samir Zaqout, who runs a team
of 10 Al Mezan field workers who interview relatives, neighbors and
doctors to compile dossiers on each attack. “We do our best in this
horrible situation to be very clear.”

Palestinians and their
supporters contend Israel massacred innocents with indiscriminate
assaults with heavy weapons, citing numerous strikes that killed
multiple family members in their homes and several that hit schools sheltering those who had sought refuge.

Israel,
in turn, says that Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza,
purposely sacrifices its own citizens by fighting in their midst, in
order to raise the world’s ire against Israel. It says that the ratio of
combatants killed in a densely populated urban environment supports its
assertion that it conducted the attacks as humanely as possible.

To
combat the heart-wrenching photographs of dead children, Israel has
published extensive video images of warplanes aborting missions to avoid
collateral damage, and provided summaries of warnings it gave residents
before attacking buildings.

Accurate accounting for this bloody
battle is problematic, especially since the fighting just stopped. Mr.
Zaqout of Al Mezan expects that scores more bodies will be pulled from
the rubble, many of them militants, in places like Shejaiya, Rafah and
Beit Hanoun that saw the hottest combat.

An analysis of the
statistics provided by both sides suggests that a majority were probably
noncombatants. Through last Thursday, according to a New York Times
analysis of a list provided by the Health Ministry, more than a third
were women, children under 15 or men over 60.

But the difference
between roughly half the dead being combatants, in the Israeli version,
or barely 10 percent, to use the most stark numbers on the other side,
is wide enough to change the characterization of the conflict.

It
seems unlikely that there will ever be a definitive breakdown both
sides accept: Israel contends that some of the casualties were caused by
errant Hamas rockets or mortars. Human rights groups acknowledge that
people killed by Hamas as collaborators and people who died naturally,
or perhaps through domestic violence, are most likely counted as well.

Then there is the question of who counts as a “combatant.”

There
are uniformed men actively firing weapons. But Hamas also has political
figures, members of its security service and employees of its
ministries. In some eyes, anyone affiliated with the organization, which
professes a goal of destroying Israel, is a combatant.

“Israel
has a very liberal definition of who qualifies,” said Sarah Leah Whitson
of Human Rights Watch. “Israel’s labeling of certain individuals as
‘terrorists’ does not make them military targets as a matter of law.”

But the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center,
the Israeli group that analyzed the first Palestinian deaths, accused
the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry of “concealment and deception” in
order “to create an ostensibly factual infrastructure for a political,
propaganda and legal campaign against Israel.”

The Times
analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely
to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in
the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but
34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided. At the same time,
women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets,
were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population
and 33 percent of the known-age casualties.

The portion that were
female rose steadily over that period, to 27 percent July 26-31. There
were six infants under age 1 on the list, and 82 children ages 1 to 5.
The oldest victim, Muhammad Mazin Faraj Daher, was 99.

Some have
not yet been identified, and may never be. “Some of the bodies are just
in pieces,” said Julie Webb, 61, a New Zealander who has lived in Gaza
for three years and assists the Health Ministry. Others, like Syrian
refugees, have not been verified because they are not in the Palestinian
population registry.

Though her team in the hospital library is
not involved in counting combatants, Ms. Webb doubts that many have been
missed. “The resistance factions claim their dead, and they have big
funerals,” she said. “They would never hide it, because it’s a thing of
pride.”

News reports generally rely on the United Nations’
estimate of civilians killed. Matthias Behnke, a United Nations
official, said those numbers came from cross-referencing research by
several human rights groups, though he declined to say how many, which
ones or what methods they used.

“Getting information about people
who are dead is not that complicated because everybody knows everybody”
in Gaza, Mr. Behnke said. “Organizations go out and collect information
independent of each other. That is quite a good basis for doing the
analysis.

“We are by no means saying these figures are absolute and final,” he added. “They will be subject to verification.”

At
Al Mezan’s office here, Mr. Zaqout and his aides were using
highlighters to update handwritten logs on Tuesday evening and issuing
small corrections to earlier news releases. He said he did not rely on
the Health Ministry data, though it had improved since Israel’s
Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, when telephone, cellular and wireless
Internet networks were cut off.

Instead, his 10 field workers
collect names directly from Gaza’s 13 hospitals (four have been closed
because of bombing) and five morgues, and go to the site of virtually
every strike to conduct interviews and fill out detailed questionnaires
in support of war-crimes accusations. Surviving children might deny that
their father was a fighter, but a medical worker might say he arrived
at the emergency room with a weapon in hand.

“Each incident that
we have which the Israelis targeted for airstrike, always we have this
kind of thinking that maybe there is a fighter,” Mr. Zaqout said. “When
we’re talking about the fighters who are fighting on the border or the
tunnels, we couldn’t know, because their bodies are not coming to the
hospital. I think these numbers will increase in the next days.”

A much-anticipated investigation
by the Justice Department has uncovered what amounted to a chamber of
horrors at Rikers Island, where teenagers were beaten and battered for
minor infractions by correction officers who acted without fear of
discovery or punishment by senior officials. The report,
released on Monday by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in
Manhattan, documents “a deep-seated culture of violence” that demands
immediate remedial action by New York City, which is now at risk of
facing a federal lawsuit if it does not take the steps outlined in the
report — which wisely calls for removing adolescents from the jail
complex altogether. The investigation, which focused mainly on conduct
from 2011 through 2013, said that the “number of injuries sustained by
adolescents is staggering ” and that the youths were in constant danger
of physical harm even when they presented no risk to the system or
safety of the staff. Nearly 44 percent of the adolescent male population
in custody as of October 2012 had been subjected to the use of force by
the correctional staff.

Further, the report said, force was
routinely used not so much to keep order but for the express purpose of
“inflicting injuries and pain.”

“Inmates are beaten as a form of
punishment, sometimes in apparent retribution for some perceived
disrespectful conduct,” it said, adding: “Correction officers improperly
use injurious force in response to refusals to follow orders, verbal
taunts, or insults, even when the inmate presents no threat to the
safety or security of staff or other inmates.” Correction officers
“frequently continue to strike inmates after they are clearly under
control and effectively restrained, often attempting to justify their
actions later by reporting that the inmate continued to resist.”

Officers
who had made up their minds to inflict punishment carried out the
beatings in areas they knew to be free of security cameras. The report
also noted that “an astonishing number of incidents” took place in
school areas, classrooms and hallways. Staff members who committed these
heinous acts deserve to be prosecuted. A departmental code of silence
aided and abetted this brutal regime and shielded its practitioners from
discovery and official rebuke. A departmental directive requiring staff
who use or witness force — or who have been alleged to employ or
witness force — to prepare a written report on the incident “prior to
leaving the facility unless medically unable to do so” appears to have
been “frequently and intentionally ignored.” In one instance in 2012,
for example, it took an officer three months to file a memo on a beating
incident. The investigating officers found the beating justified and
made no mention of the officer’s failure to submit the report
contemporaneously.

The report rightly calls for a complete
overhaul in departmental operations. It recommends, for example, that
adolescents be removed from Rikers Island, which houses mainly adults,
and placed in a facility elsewhere. It insists that the city improve
officer training, and that the procedures be followed for promptly and
accurately reporting force incidents.

Most important, it calls
on the city to completely reform the institutional culture of the jail
system to ensure that violence is no longer tolerated. The United States
attorney will need to stay engaged until these goals are met.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4) As U.S. Speeds the Path to Deportation, Distress Fills New Family Detention Centers

After
declaring the surge of Central American migrants crossing the border a
humanitarian crisis, the Obama administration has shifted sharply to a
strategy of deterrence, moving families to isolated facilities and
placing them on a fast track for deportation to send a blunt message
back home that those caught entering illegally will not be permitted to
stay.

In a far corner of the New Mexico desert, in the town of
Artesia, more than 600 women and children are being held in an emergency
detention center that opened in late June. On Friday, officials began filling up a new center in Karnes City, Tex.,
for up to 532 adults and children, and they are adding beds to a center
for families in Pennsylvania that now holds about 95 people.Most of the
debate over the illegal influx has centered on about 57,000
unaccompanied minors apprehended since October. But the number of minors
with parents has increased even faster, nearly tripling to more than
22,000 so far this year from about 8,500 in all of 2013, according to
the Pew Research Center. More than 40,000 adults and their children — an
unprecedented number — were caught along the southwest border,
according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Until recently,
most families were released to remain in the United States while their
deportation cases moved slowly through the courts. But that policy fueled rumors
reaching Central America that if parents arrived with young children,
they would be given permits to stay. To stop such talk, officials said,
they are moving swiftly to expand family detention.

“Our borders
are not open to illegal immigration,” said the Homeland Security
secretary, Jeh Johnson, emphasizing his point when the Karnes City
center started up last week.

The migrants in Artesia were
apprehended in South Texas, then moved more than 700 miles to the
hastily arranged barracks behind the walls of a law enforcement training
campus. Homeland Security officials said the plan is for them to be
held for no more than 10 days before being sent on flights back home.

But
the administration’s plan has been complicated by the assertions of
many migrants who say they are frightened of being sent back into deadly
gang violence, setting off required reviews to determine if they have
valid asylum claims. Some migrants have refused to sign travel documents
required for deportations. At least two women and their children in
Artesia were taken off deportation flights on the tarmac after they
insisted they would face harm at home, according to legal advocates who
visited the center.

“They told me I was certain to be deported,
but I don’t want to go back there,” Katy Serrano, 22, a Salvadoran
mother with a 15-month-old, said in a hurried cellphone interview from
the detention center, where telephone communications are limited. “All
my family is here, and back there is only a gang that said they would
hurt my son.”

At the end of July, 283 women and 344 minors were
in Artesia, including dozens of infants and toddlers, almost all from El
Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The administration is making it
difficult for migrants to press asylum claims and is denying bond to
anyone, including children, who has qualified legally for release,
according to lawyers and social workers.

Five immigration
officers based in the center are interviewing migrants to assess their
fears of persecution, and in a makeshift courtroom immigration judges
far away are hearing asylum cases via video teleconferencing. But
lawyers who have made the long drive to Artesia, which is 240 miles from
Albuquerque and 200 miles from El Paso, have discovered that there was
no protocol to let them in and no means to file even basic court
documents.

“They just set up this big deportation mill in the
middle of nowhere,” said Olsi Vrapi, an immigration lawyer based in
Albuquerque. One woman he was assisting had her asylum claim swiftly
denied by a judge while an associate from his office was standing
outside the center, waiting to be let in.

In the Artesia center’s
first month, 209 migrants were deported, officials said. The pace of
deportations would have been faster, but nearly two-thirds of the
mothers expressed fears that they would face violence back home and have
been held for asylum reviews, officials and legal advocates said.
Lawyers who have interviewed migrants in Artesia say many more have
viable claims than Central Americans who came in the past.

With
only weeks to organize the detention center, immigration enforcement
officials scrambled to create a family-oriented space, with small bunk
rooms for mothers and their children, high chairs in the cafeteria and a
playroom with toys. Detainees receive medical screenings and
vaccinations when they arrive, officials said. One child who came down
with chickenpox last week was quickly quarantined while other detainees
were vaccinated and deportations were temporarily halted.

But the
center is not set up to hold young children for a long time. Ms.
Serrano said her son, Mateo, had fallen ill repeatedly during four weeks
in Artesia, including a cough and vomiting that had required an
emergency trip to a nearby hospital. On Saturday, his fever spiked
again. Officials have reiterated that she is scheduled for deportation
and declined to release her and her child.“They don’t have the ability
to care for these small children,” said Bryan Johnson, a lawyer for Ms.
Serrano, who added that he was struggling to communicate with her from
his offices in Bay Shore, N.Y., because there are no landline phones in
the center. “They are putting these babies at risk to deter future
people from coming.”

Peter
Boogaard, a Homeland Security spokesman, said Artesia and the other new
family centers would “ensure more timely and effective removals” of
adults with children “that comply with our legal and international
obligations.”

Families in Artesia face an uphill fight to avoid
deportation. Lisa Brodyaga, a lawyer based in the Rio Grande Valley, is
representing a Salvadoran woman, detained with her 11-year-old daughter,
whose police officer husband has refused to join forces with criminal
gangs. The woman, whom Ms. Brodyaga identified only as O. to protect her
privacy, had given a detailed account of her flight from gang members
who camped out on the roof of her house and harassed her family in the
food store, threatening to assault “that which you hold most dear” — her
daughter.

With space tight at the center, asylum officers
interviewed the woman and her daughter together, Ms. Brodyaga said, and
then ruled that their fears were not credible.

“It’s rough
having your 11-year-old daughter present when you are explaining that
she is the one who could be raped and killed if you were sent back,” Ms.
Brodyaga said, adding that the woman is still fighting her deportation.

The
few migrants who have qualified for release have been told that they
would not be allowed to post bond. According to court documents,
government prosecutors argued that releasing any detainees from Artesia
“further encourages mass migration” and would create “significant
adverse national security consequences.”

Laura Lichter, a former
president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association who helped
mobilize a corps of lawyers to head to Artesia, said immigration
officials appeared to be going through the motions of legal review. “The
perception,” she said, “is that people come there to get deported.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

5) Some Israelis Count Open Discourse and Dissent Among Gaza War Casualties

At
a recent demonstration in Tel Aviv against Israel’s military offensive
in the Gaza Strip, counterdemonstrators chanted “Death to the left!”
along with the more commonly heard “Death to Arabs!” Afterward, some of
the right-wingers beat some of the leftists — using large poles that had
held Israeli flags.

The Israel Broadcasting Authority blocked
B’Tselem, a human rights group, from running a paid radio advertisement
reading the names and ages of Palestinian children killed in Gaza.

Bar-Ilan
University rebuked a professor who expressed empathy for all the war’s
victims in an email to students.And at a recent screening at the
Jerusalem Cinematheque, a fading bastion of liberalism, when some
audience members stood for a moment of silence in memory of four
Palestinian boys killed as they played soccer on a Gaza beach, others
who kept their seats berated them with cries of “Shame on you — what
about our boys?” and “You’re raping the audience,” according to several
people who were there.

In Israel, open discourse and dissent
appear to be among the casualties of the monthlong war in Gaza,
according to stalwarts of what is known as the Zionist left — Israelis
who want the country to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and
help create a sovereign Palestinian state.Israeli politics have been
drifting rightward for years, and many see that trend sharpening and
solidifying now. Several polls find that as many as nine out of 10
Israeli Jews back the prosecution of the war by Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. When that support slipped a bit last week, it seemed to be
because more people wanted an even more aggressive assault on Hamas, the
militant Islamist faction that dominates Gaza. Israelis who question
the government or the military on Facebook, or who even share
photographs of death and devastation in Gaza, find themselves
defriended, often by people they thought were politically like-minded.

“One
of the victims of war is any nuance,” said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman,
who emigrated from New York in 1979. “The idea of having a nuanced
position that recognizes the suffering on both sides and the
complications is almost impossible to maintain.”

Rabbi
Weiman-Kelman is the founder of Kol Haneshama, one of Israel’s largest
and best-known Reform congregations, where every service ends with an
adaptation of a traditional Hebrew prayer for peace that includes a line
in Arabic borrowed from a traditional Muslim prayer. (Disclosure: I
have occasionally attended those services.)

When Rabbi
Weiman-Kelman recently circulated a petition condemning racist comments
by a right-wing rabbi, a member of the synagogue’s board whose son was
fighting in Gaza said the congregation should stay out of the matter and
“focus on our boys,” he recalled. And during services Friday night,
another leader of the congregation with lengthy leftist credentials
stood up and said he no longer felt comfortable with a different prayer,
which included a wish for “shalom” — peace — for “all who dwell on
earth.” “The man said, ‘There really are bad people out there who I
don’t wish shalom,’ ” the rabbi recounted. “It was a devastating
moment.”

Some politicians, like the Labor Party chief, Isaac
Herzog, have invoked an ethos of “Quiet, we’re shooting”: When sons and
brothers are on the front line, the thinking goes, unity is more
important than robust debate.

But the left-leaning newspaper
Haaretz ran an editorial last week that referred to “McCarthyism
spreading in Israel,” citing the Bar-Ilan University case.

“Less
and less tolerance exists for such a multiplicity of voices,” wrote
Naomi Chazan, an activist, academic and former leftist member of
Parliament, in a recent column in the newspaper. “The cohesion of
Israeli society is being torn asunder, as anti-Arab sentiments have
gained traction and intolerance runs rampant.”

Daria Carmon, 33,
who attended the Tel Aviv protest, said that slogans and viewpoints that
used to be seen as extremist had become mainstream. She blamed the
invective that Israeli leaders use toward Hamas, and the Israeli news
outlets that cover every soldier’s funeral but rarely show video from
Gaza. (Paula Weiman-Kelman, the rabbi’s wife, has taken to watching Al
Jazeera.)

“It’s hard to fight against such a collectivist
society, when all the messages are that everybody’s out to get us,” Ms.
Carmon said. “It takes a lot to really resist that. It’s exhausting.”

PESHAWAR,
Pakistan — An American drone strike against a compound in the North
Waziristan tribal district on Wednesday killed at least six people,
Pakistani officials and local residents said. It was the latest in a
series of strikes by C.I.A.-operated drone aircraft to coincide with a
major offensive by the Pakistani military in the area, which is
notorious as a sanctuary for militants.

Four missiles slammed
into the compound near Datta Khel, about 20 miles west of Miram Shah,
the main town in North Waziristan, according to a security official in
Peshawar who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Pakistani
ground troops are pushing toward Datta Khel as part of a drive to expel
the Taliban and allied foreign militants from North Waziristan. The
operation, which started on June 15, has displaced at least 800,000
civilians and resulted in at least 550 deaths.The Pakistani military
says it has complete control of Miram Shah and North Waziristan’s other
principal town, Mir Ali. But there has been relatively little direct
ground fighting; rather, many of the deaths have been attributed to air
and artillery strikes on residential compounds where militants were
believed to be sheltering. Most militant fighters who were in North
Waziristan’s towns and cities in June are believed to have fled to
neighboring tribal districts, or to more remote parts of North
Waziristan like Datta Khel, which remains under Taliban control.

The
military said that airstrikes killed 30 suspected militants at six
locations on Tuesday, including Datta Khel, the area where the drone
struck on Wednesday. The military also said there was ground combat in
the area.

“Our forces are now in Datta Khel, where we are facing
some resistance,” a senior security official in Peshawar said. “Two of
our men got killed in an encounter in Datta Khel bazaar a couple of days
ago. Four Uzbeks were killed in that shootout.”

Still, the
official said, the operation was making progress. “More than 80 percent
of North Waziristan now stands cleared” of militants, he said.

Pakistani
officials give slightly different accounts of the casualties inflicted
by the latest American drone strike, the seventh this year. The official
in Peshawar said six people died, including four Uzbeks and two members
of the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. But a government official posted
to North Waziristan, but currently living in an adjacent district, said
he had received reports of seven deaths, all members of the Haqqani
network. The discrepancy highlighted the difficulty of obtaining
reliable information from the tribal districts.

The military
operation began one week after a Taliban assault on the main airport in
Karachi, the country’s most populous city. It followed the collapse of
government efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban.

Human
rights groups and local residents challenge the military’s claims that
all 550 people reported killed in the operation so far were militants;
they say some civilians have been killed in airstrikes as well. The
military has declared North Waziristan off limits to journalists, and it
is frequently impossible to independently confirm events and casualty
reports there.

The Taliban issued a thinly veiled threat against
local journalists on Tuesday. In a statement addressed to two advocacy
groups, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect
Journalists, the Taliban accused the news media of “playing the role of
war propagandists” and warned of possible attacks.

“If we get
engaged in attacking them, then no crying and sobbing will be heard,”
said the message, signed by the Taliban from the Mohmand tribal
district. The leader of that faction, Omar Khalid Khorasani, is seen as a
rising force in the movement, which has suffered two major splits in
recent months.

Concerns about reprisals for the North Waziristan
offensive prompted the military last week to take over responsibility
for security in Islamabad, the capital. The offensive has also worsened
political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which accuse each
other of clandestinely backing certain Taliban factions.

The
Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, also faces new challenges at
home from two political rivals, who said they would try to topple his
government with street protests over the next few weeks.

KABUL,
Afghanistan — An airstrike by the American-led coalition killed at
least four civilians, including two women, Afghan officials said
Tuesday. The attack prompted a sharp rebuke from President Hamid Karzai, who has long bristled at the deaths of Afghans in military operations led by foreign forces.

The strike took place a day earlier in Shindand District, in western Afghanistan,
after Taliban fighters fired rockets at an Afghan military air base
that also houses coalition forces, said Abdul Qayum Noorzai, the
district police chief. The insurgents escaped on a pair of motorcycles.

A
short time later, around 7 p.m., a coalition aircraft targeted four
people on two motorcycles, but those struck were civilians, not the
Taliban fighters who had fired the rockets, Mr. Noorzai said. In a
statement, the coalition said that it was aware of the allegations that
it had killed civilians, and that it was “working hand in hand with
Afghan authorities to resolve this as quickly as possible.” It did not
provide any other details.

But Mr. Karzai condemned the
airstrike, saying in a statement that “any type of military assault on
innocent civilians or their houses is giving no value to the lives of
Afghans.”

American commanders have tightened the rules governing
airstrikes in recent years, and the number of deaths from them has
dropped significantly. But the issue remains among the most contentious
in the relationship between Mr. Karzai and his American backers, and Mr.
Karzai has cited killings of Afghans by coalition forces as one of his
main reasons for refusing to sign a long-term security deal with the
United States.

American officials have said that without the
deal, they will be forced to withdraw all United States forces from
Afghanistan when the NATO combat mission formally ends this year.

GENEVA
— As a 72-hour cease-fire took hold in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations
official said Tuesday that Israel’s nearly monthlong offensive against
Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that runs Gaza, had had a
“catastrophic and tragic impact” on children in the territory and that
reconstruction would require many hundreds of millions of dollars.

The
conflict has killed 408 children and injured 2,502, Pernille Ironside,
the head of the Unicef office in Gaza, said, briefing reporters in
Geneva by telephone. About 373,000 children have had traumatic
experiences and need psychosocial support, she said.

“There isn’t
a single family in Gaza which hasn’t been touched by direct loss,” Ms.
Ironside said. “The impact that has on the ability of children to cope
cannot be overstated.”The weaponry used in the assault on Gaza caused
amputations and maiming, she added. “This happened before the eyes of
children,” she said. “They have seen their friends and their parents
die.”

The United Nations and other humanitarian agencies are at
the limit of their ability to cope with the fallout from the assault,
which Ms. Ironside said had far surpassed the combined impact of two
previous conflicts, in 2008-09 and in 2012. About 270,000 people have
sought shelter at around 90 centers run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and at least 200,000 others have taken refuge with family members, friends or neighbors.

The
damage inflicted on Gaza’s power and water infrastructure has led to
acute shortages of clean water for several weeks. What is available is
used only for drinking and is not sufficient for basic hygiene, Ms.
Ironside said, giving rise to scabies and other contagious diseases.

Shelling
and bombing have damaged 142 schools — 89 of them run by the United
Nations — , and multiple strikes on Gaza’s sole power plant and other
infrastructure have left it beyond repair, Ms. Ironside said. The cost
of reconstruction will run to “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
millions of dollars,” she said.

But stringent Israeli controls on
goods going into Gaza severely constrained past efforts at rebuilding,
Ms. Ironside said. She urged an end to Israel’s blockade. “The
international community cannot accept the rebuilding of Gaza on the same
terms as before,” she said.

Even on the most violent cellblocks at Rikers Island,
the beatings were astonishing in their severity. Two inmates were
strapped to gurneys, taken to a clinic in a mental health unit and
beaten so badly by correction officers that blood splattered the walls
and witnesses described feeling sick to their stomachs.

Several
witnesses, including civilian staff members, were so appalled that, in a
rare occurrence at Rikers, they came forward to tell investigators what
they had seen on that night in December 2012. The New York City
Department of Investigation referred the case for prosecution twice, and
The New York Times reported details of the assaults in an investigation
into brutality by guards last month.

On Monday, a damning report
by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the
Southern District of New York, about the “deep-seated culture of
violence” against adolescent inmates at Rikers Island singled out the
episodes as particularly deplorable. But in a striking case study of
just how rare it is for Rikers guards to be punished, the Bronx district
attorney’s office, which has jurisdiction over the jail, said on
Tuesday that it was declining to prosecute the officers involved because
of inconsistencies and contradictions in testimony.

The decision came just a day after the federal report placed much of the blame
for the culture of brutality at Rikers Island on a failure to punish
guards who use excessive and unnecessary force. Correction officers,
according to the report, brutalize inmates routinely “with the
expectation that they will face little or no consequences for their
unlawful conduct.”

The report singled out the investigative
division of the Correction Department for particular rebuke, saying the
system for investigating attacks by guards was short-staffed and
undermined by archaic paper-based record-keeping and an institutional
bias against inmates.

But successful criminal prosecutions are also rare. In its investigation, The Times examined 129 cases from last year
in which inmates suffered severe injuries in altercations with
correction officers. In none of those cases had officers been
prosecuted.

Out of 20 cases against correction officers opened
by the Bronx district attorney’s office in the last five years, only
four resulted in prison sentences, three of them for less than two
years.

Even in severe assaults, with injuries ranging from
concussions to broken bones, bringing criminal charges against officers
can be difficult. Inmates are often considered unreliable witnesses and
the federal report described a “powerful code of silence” among officers
who often try to intimidate the jail’s staff into keeping quiet.

One
of the most disturbing aspects of the clinic assault, witnesses later
said in interviews with The Times, was how brazen it was.

The
first inmate to be beaten was Tamel Dixon. On the night of Dec. 17,
2012, around 8 p.m., Mr. Dixon, 18, was removed from his solitary
confinement cell, handcuffed to a gurney and taken to the jail clinic.

Officer
Lameen Barnes prepared the official report on the episode, writing that
Mr. Dixon had tried to throw an “unknown liquid substance” at the
officers, and in response, they had searched his cell for contraband.
When the officers entered, the report said, Mr. Dixon insulted them with
profanity, refused to follow orders from Capt. Rod Marcel, “took a
fighting stance” and “pulled and twisted” until officers were able to
restrain him and handcuff him to the gurney. No contraband was found.

Mr.
Dixon was “escorted to the main clinic for medical examination without
any further incident of force used,” Mr. Barnes wrote.

Two
clinician witnesses interviewed by The Times, whose stories matched an
email written by a third, told a radically different story. They said
that as Mr. Dixon was wheeled into an examination room out of range of
video cameras, he kept screaming, “Don’t leave me, they’re going to kill
me.” About a half-dozen officers were in the room, and one in
particular kept pounding him, repeatedly, “as if in a trance,” one
clinician said.

According to Mr. Barnes’s report, there were five
other guards present. Captains Marcel and Budnarine Behari were
overseeing the beating, the witnesses said, and a few times, Captain
Marcel yelled, “Stop resisting.” After they finished with Mr. Dixon, a
second inmate, Andre Lane, was wheeled in, and was so badly beaten, the
clinicians said, that the next morning, the exam rooms were still
blood-splattered.

A senior health official told investigators
that an officer warned him to keep quiet, saying, “Sure is good there
were witnesses to see that those guys hit their heads on the cabinets
themselves.”

Both captains had long histories of using force with
inmates. Captain Marcel alone had almost 100 serious incidents dating
back to 1999, according to Correction Department records obtained by The
Times.

Captain Behari, who has also used force on inmates on
dozens of occasions in the last five years, was involved in another
beating in April 2012, in which an inmate’s nose was broken and one of
his vertebrae was fractured. Administrative charges were brought against
him and five correction officers in that case, but the department’s
internal disciplinary system is plagued by delays, a serious failing
highlighted in the federal report. Indeed, 28 months later, there is
still no decision in the case.

Witnesses to the clinic case reacted angrily on Tuesday when told that the district attorney was not going to prosecute.

“I’m
furious,” said a social worker who was interviewed about the case by
prosecutors from the district attorney’s office and the Department of
Investigation. “I was a witness to the whole thing, I saw it happen,”
she said, insisting on anonymity in fear of retribution from correction
officers.

She said it was common practice — “normalized
brutality” — for beatings to go on at the clinic, because there were no
cameras there. Three health officials said in interviews that guards
would come in with an inmate and order the medical personnel to the back
of the clinic so they could not witness what was going on.

The
clinician said she was interviewed by the district attorney’s office
last summer, but then did not hear from anyone for a year. Only
recently, following publication of the investigation by The Times, was
she interviewed again.

Mark G. Peters, the Department of
Investigation commissioner, said his office had referred the case for
prosecution in July 2013 and again in June this year. He said he had referred the case on Tuesday to the Correction Department for disciplinary action against the officers.

A
spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said prosecution
had been declined “because of inconsistent versions of events,
contradictions between the witness statements and the forensics
(injuries of the inmates), and the inability of witnesses to observe the
events.”

Asked in an interview last month why it had taken 20
months to decide whether to prosecute the case, Robert T. Johnson, the
Bronx district attorney, said that the lawyer originally assigned to the
case had become bogged down in other cases and then left the office for
private practice. He said he did not assign a second prosecutor sooner
because “everybody’s got their own caseload.”

By the time a new prosecutor was assigned, he said, key witnesses were hard to find.

“Some of these cases, from Rikers Island in particular, some of the witnesses get scattered.”

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10) Solidarity with Palestine
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to intensify campaign in
solidarity with Palestine

Statement by COSATU

Congress of South
African Trade Unions, August 5, 2014

http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=9277#sthash.rlBVAdnx.dpuf

The
Congress of South African Trade Unions held a joint meeting of its
Political and Socio-economic Commissions (CEC sub-committees) on August
5, 2014. It resolved to intensify its campaign of solidarity with the
people of Palestine and against the brutal military rampage against the
people of Gaza by the Israel apartheid state which has left around 1900
Palestinians dead.

The meeting agreed to urgently step up its
solidarity campaign and to coordinate it more effectively with the
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions,
South Africa and many other civil society groups. We shall continue to
demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to South Africa and the
recall of the South African ambassador to Israel.

The main
thrust of the campaign must now be to organize an economic, trade,
investment and cultural boycott that bites. Lists are to be drawn up of
all the Israeli companies operating in South Africa, and all
Israeli-made products so that we can mobilize a mass movement to boycott
them.

In order to hit the Israel economy where it hurts, we are
also urging all our affiliates to use their investment and provident
funds more effectively to support this campaign and target international
companies propping up the regime by supplying Israel with goods and
services, particularly those supplying finance, arms and infrastructure
that enable it to operate in the Palestine occupied territories. That is
the only language the Israeli rulers will understand.

We note
and welcome the several countries and organizations all over the world
that have taken steps to isolate the apartheid state of Israel and
concretely supported the Palestine people’s struggle to end Israel’s
colonial expansionism. We particularly applaud the solidarity action
taken by Latin American governments.

Our campaign is to end
apartheid and occupation now. There will be no peace in the Middle East
unless the world acts with decisiveness, not just for piecemeal
ceasefires, but to end the occupation and colonialism by the state of
Israel.

The Special Central Executive Committee of COSATU next
week will make further announcements on developing this program of
action towards building a more sustainable and effective momentum in
support of the Palestinian people’s struggles.

We shall be
drawing on the experience of the international anti-apartheid campaign
and studying similar campaigns against Israel in other countries to
learn lessons on the best way to put pressure on the Israeli apartheid
regime to stop its carnage

We urge all members and supporters to
attend the mass rally in Cape Town on Saturday August 9, and all other
rallies across the country.

Stop the Israeli apartheid state’s war against the people of Gaza!

Forward to a free and independent Palestine!

Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)

—Congress of South African Trade Unions, August 5, 2014

http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=9277#sthash.rlBVAdnx.dpuf

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11) Stop
the Massacre in Gaza
RMT issues call for support for latest demonstrations to stop the massacre
in Gaza

Transport
Union RMT today, August 5, 2014, issued a renewed call for the biggest
possible turn-out in support of the next round of protests organized up
and down the country by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) for an
end to the massacre in Gaza.

With nearly 2000 Palestinian’s
killed, 10,000 injured and schools, refuges and hospitals targeted, RMT
is urging all member’s to join the protests and to ensure a massive and
continuing trade union presence on the streets as the PSC campaign
forces the voices of opposition into the mainstream media.

As the Palestine Solidarity Campaign says:

“Whole
neighborhoods have been flattened, and almost half of the Strip was
already a ‘no go zone,’ before the horrific shelling of Rafah yesterday.

“The horror is overwhelming, with Palestinians struggling to
dig out the bodies of the dead, hospitals struggling to cope with the
bloodshed and death, and shelters struggling to cope with the
hundreds-of-thousands attempting to seek refuge. Ambulances, hospitals
and UN schools sheltering refugees have all been targeted by Israeli
bombs.

“The British government has blood on its hands, reports
on the £42 million worth of arms export licenses being granted since
2010 to sell military equipment to Israel, including ammunition, and
components for the Hermes drone, which has been widely used to monitor
Palestinians and guided missile strikes. It has also licensed a UK
company to supply components for Israel’s main battle tank.

“International
outrage has escalated, with thousands blocking the streets outside the
Israeli Embassy in London, and protests taking place across Britain
against the slaughter.”

This Saturday, August 9, a major
demonstration will assemble in London at noon at a location to be
confirmed and is expected to be massive as the British public send out
the clearest possible message to David Cameron and his Government to
take action to end the bloodshed. Local demonstrations are being called
all the time and a full list, along with updated details of Saturday’s
London Demo can be found at www.palestinecampaign.org

RMT Acting General Secretary Mick Cash said:

“RMT
is mobilizing our members in support of the people of Gaza. Our union
has a clear policy for the boycott of Israeli goods as one of the ways
that we can register our outrage and horror at the massacre that has
been unleashed on the Palestinian people.

“The images and
reports that we have seen and heard are just pure butchery of innocent
people who stand no chance against the arsenal of weapons supplied to
the Israeli forces by our Government, the Americans and others around
the globe who have blood on their hands.

“Trade unions have a
key role to play in harnessing and mobilizing the opposition to the
massacre in Gaza and that is exactly what we are doing.”

MOSCOW
— Edward J. Snowden, the American intelligence contractor who divulged a
raft of secret documents and then fled to Russia, has been granted a
three-year residence permit here, his lawyer announced Thursday.

Anatoly
G. Kucherena, the lawyer, told a news conference that Mr. Snowden had
not been given asylum in Russia, but rather had been granted permission
to live here until 2017, Russian news media reported.

His new
status includes the right to leave Russia for up to three months, Mr.
Kucherena said. Mr. Snowden, 31, had originally planned to head to Latin
America for asylum. Anger in Germany at American surveillance has also
prompted some discussion there about whether Mr. Snowden should be
allowed to live there. But he has so far avoided setting foot outside
Russia lest the United States find a way to arrest him.

His
previous, yearlong residence permit, granted last August, expired on
July 31 and a new one had been expected. His lawyer filed the necessary
paperwork earlier this summer.

Mr. Snowden is wanted by the
United States government for exposing numerous secret intelligence
documents, including a program by the National Security Agency to
monitor millions of email messages.

Senior government officials
have called him a traitor, while Mr. Snowden maintains that he is a
whistle-blower who exposed an illegal government surveillance program.

Without
going into too many details, Mr. Kucherena said that Mr. Snowden was
living on a salary earned from an unspecified job in the information
technology field, and on donations into an open fund from individuals
and nongovernmental organizations. The lawyer said that his client was
learning to speak Russian, and that he would be eligible to become a
citizen after living here for five years, counted from his first
residence permit granted in 2013.

Asked about Mr. Snowden’s
living arrangements in Moscow, Mr. Kucherena said that he could not
comment in detail but indicated that Mr. Snowden was not on the Russian
government dole.

“The government cannot provide him with housing,
despite the fact that he was granted a residence permit,” Mr. Kucherena
said. “He leads a rather modest lifestyle.”

Mr. Kucherena also
denied that Mr. Snowden was protected by government bodyguards, saying
that there would be all manner of “bureaucratic delays” for such
protection to be organized. But Mr. Snowden did live with private
security, a priority given hostile American government statements about
him, the lawyer said.

The welcome mat for Mr. Snowden was in
sharp contrast to that of another American citizen living in Russia,
Jennifer Gaspar, 43, who has been ordered deported by the Russian
federal security service, or F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B.
In the deportation order issued by the Federal Migration Service that
arrived at her St. Petersburg home on Tuesday, she was described as “a
threat to national security.”

Ms. Gaspar’s husband, Ivan Y.
Pavlov, who is Russian, is an outspoken human rights attorney who has
pushed for a more transparent government, the very argument that Mr.
Snowden has been making about the American government in his own
defense.

The couple, who have a 5-year-old Russian daughter,
think Ms. Gaspar is being deported as a means to push Mr. Pavlov into
exile. The government agencies involved have declined to comment. The
couple are appealing the deportation order.

Mr. Snowden spent
some 40 days in the transit lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow’s
main international gateway, after he was stuck there when the United
States revoked his passport. The initial residence permit granted to him
considerably soured relations between Washington and Moscow, prompting
President Obama to cancel a summit meeting with President Vladimir V.
Putin.

DEIR
AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — For nearly four decades, Al Awda Co. has stocked
Gaza’s shelves with sweets and snacks, starting as a humble
refugee-camp bakery and growing into a 180,000-square-foot factory with
600 workers.

On Wednesday, all that was left was a faint whiff of chocolate amid the sour smell of a fire that burned for three days.

A
barrage of Israeli artillery turned Al Awda into a charred graveyard of
machinery and material. The $1.3 million German control panel that
powered the place became a metal cabinet of fried wires. Some 300 tons
each of sugar, flour and margarine — gone. Metal roofs collapsed,
cinder-block walls had gaping holes, floors were carpeted in rubble.

“I
didn’t even go to the third floor; I don’t want to see what’s there,”
said Mohammed Al Telbani, 61, who founded the business in 1977. “I’m
used to building. I’m not used to destruction.”During Israel’s monthlong
air-and-ground assault on the Gaza Strip, the world’s attention has
focused on the more than 1,800 Palestinians killed and the more than
30,000 homes destroyed or damaged. But as a temporary truce held and
talks toward a longer-term cease-fire began Wednesday, business leaders
said that 175 of Gaza’s most successful industrial plants had also taken
devastating hits, plunging an already despairing economy into a deeper
abyss.

Ali Hayek, head of Gaza’s federation of industries,
said these factories directly provided perhaps 5,000 of the most stable
jobs in this impoverished Palestinian sliver, where the latest estimates
of unemployment are as high as 47 percent. The collateral damage is
exponential: Sabha, Gaza’s only producer of tomato paste, has contracts
with 5,000 farmers, Mr. Hayek said. Legions of drivers will be without
cargo. Rebuilding anything is that much harder with 63 construction
companies offline, including several cement makers.

The
destruction of Al Awda alone threatens its suppliers of milk, plastic
wrapping, flour and cardboard boxes. Then again, Hamada, a huge flour
mill in Gaza City, and Khozendar, Gaza’s only carton-maker, are also
gone, Mr. Hayek said, along with 21 food companies, 10 clothing
manufacturers and the entire industrial zone in the northern town of
Beit Hanoun.

“After 30 days of war, the economic situation has
become, like, dead,” said Mr. Hayek, whose group represents 3,900
businesses employing 35,000 people. “It seems the occupation
intentionally destroyed these vital factories that constitute the
backbone of the society.”

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for
the Israeli military, said Wednesday that he did not have a specific
explanation for the attack on Al Awda, but that “categorically, we do
not target factories.”

“We target facilities that have been
involved in rocket manufacturing,” he said, “or locations that rockets
have been launched from.”

Palestinian officials plan to ask
international donors for $6 billion to rebuild Gaza this fall. But after
Israel’s 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead, in which more than 1,000 small
businesses and workshops were wiped out, a promised $4.7 billion never
materialized, people in Gaza say.

Omar Shaban, an economist who
lives in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah and has known Al Awda
and its owner since childhood, has long been talking about the
structural dysfunction in Gaza. Israel severely restricts imports,
exports, farming and fishing. The government payroll is bloated and a
black market had thrived, fueled by hundreds of tunnels to Egypt, used
for smuggling goods. Exacerbating the crisis, the new Egyptian
government closed most of those tunnels last summer, idling even
internationally funded construction projects. The Hamas-run government
lost millions in tax revenue, its employees lost paychecks, and prices
for diesel, cars and consumer products shot up.

Now, after the
loss of the factories, Mr. Shaban said, “The condition of our society
needs new terms that do not exist in any textbook.”

“We should
stop asking about the percentage of unemployment and start talking about
the percentage of employment,” he said. “I try hard to draw the
boundary of the problem — it’s borderless. It’s a long list of cause and
result, cause and result; this will lead to that and will lead to that.
It’s a circle of impacts that will cause another problem.”

Though
he is wealthier than all but a few of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, Mr.
Telbani’s story is Gaza’s story. Like some two-thirds of the
population, he is classified as a refugee, his family having lost its
home in Beersheba at Israel’s founding (his company’s name, Al Awda,
means “return”). Like many men of his generation, his first jobs were
inside Israel, in restaurants and construction projects.

But
after years of exporting its snacks and sweets to the United States,
Europe and the United Arab Emirates, Al Awda has only managed to get a
few trucks of inventory to the West Bank over the last decade because of
Israel’s blockade.

In Gaza, Al Awda is more than a staple of
pantry shelves and party platters. Schoolchildren take factory tours as
field trips. It is a symbol of Palestinian resilience and
entrepreneurial possibility.

Mr. Telbani said the company had
more than $1 million in sales each month for its dozens of products —
the classic Family Wafers in strawberry, lemon and other flavors, along
with biscuits, pretzels, chocolate-covered marshmallow creams, corn
puffs, ice cream and juice. He estimated it would take $20 million to
rebuild the factory.

Eyad Mohammed Telbani, 37, the oldest of Mr.
Telbani’s 12 children and deputy chief of the business, said that when
the war began, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he and three
brothers-in-law had slept at the factory’s entrance and taken their
pre-dawn breakfasts and post-fast iftar dinners there.

A few
shells hit the six-building factory, just east of the main Saladin
Street in Deir al-Balah, 10 or 12 days ago, the younger Mr. Telbani
said. Then, on Thursday — exactly a year after his brother Alian, 26,
was killed at the factory during a robbery — the real assault came, at
about 8 a.m.

More shells came while firefighters tried to extinguish the flames, he said. The next day, even more.

Above
the administrative office, the third-floor apartment where one of the
elder Mr. Telbani’s three wives lived with her three small children is
in ruins. Metal pots lie amid the broken tiles in what was the kitchen; a
standing fan is half buried in a small bedroom. A red fire extinguisher
sits in the doorway.

On the second floor, Mr. Telbani’s own
grand quarters are intact: A woman mopped the broad tile floor under
faded ceiling friezes and chandeliers. But his bedroom overlooking the
shipping area reeks of smoke.

The minarets of the mosque next
door, which Mr. Telbani paid to build six years ago and named Al Awda,
were also hit. Two containers of medicine that the Red Crescent society
had stored in the ice cream factory when it ran out of refrigerator
space were destroyed, along with 40,000 treats.

On Wednesday, the
second day of a promised three-day halt in hostilities, a couple of
dozen men were on site, sliding boxes of “The First Wafers” down a
makeshift metal chute and onto trucks. But even these may be unusable
because of smoke damage.

Ahmad Tawashi, 30, has been working at
Al Awda as a technician for five years, making the minimum rate, about
$250 a month. His wife is about to deliver their fourth child, and he
wonders how he will pay the hospital bill.

If his home had been
destroyed, Mr. Tawashi said, he could work to earn enough money to
rebuild. But without the factory, he said, “I don’t know what will
happen.”

Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) combat soldier and company sergeant Eran Efrati,
28, has become the Edward Snowden of Israel. This brave whistleblower
has now found himself arrested and interrogated by the Israeli
authorities nothing more than speaking out agains the use of illegal
weapons in Gaza, and the carte blanche killing of Palestinian civilians by rogue members of the IDF.
Last week, on Tuesday, July 29, Efrati announced on Facebook that
his confidential sources within the IDF had informed him that the “real
reason” for the recent IDF Shuja’iyya massacre, which had been carried
out just over a week earlier, on July 20, was that IDF soldiers were
deliberately targeting civilians as “punishment” and “retribution” for
the deaths of fellow soldiers in their units.

In recent weeks I was on the border of Gaza and getting
reports from soldiers in the Gaza Strip who leak information out to me. I
am in the process of publication of two big stories in major U.S.
newspapers, but there are some things I can share with you right now:
Soldiers in two different units inside Gaza leaked information about the
murdering of Palestinians by sniper fire in Shuja’iyya neighborhood as
punishment for the death of soldiers in their units. After the shooting
on the Israeli armored personnel carriers, which killed seven soldiers
of the Golani Brigade, the Israeli army carried out a massacre in
Shuja’iyya neighborhood. A day after the massacre, many Palestinians
came to search for their relatives and their families in the rubble. In
one of the videos uploaded to YouTube, a young Palestinian man Salem
Shammaly calls the names of his family and looking for them between the
ruins when he is suddenly shot at in his chest and falls down. A few
seconds after that, there are two additional shootings from snipers into
his body, killing him instantly. Since the video was released, there
was no official response from the IDF spokesperson.
Today I can report that the official command that was handed down to
the soldiers in Shujaiyya was to capture Palestinian homes as outposts.
From these posts, the soldiers drew an imaginary red line, and amongst
themselves decided to shoot to death anyone who crosses it. Anyone
crossing the line was defined as a threat to their outposts, and was
thus deemed a legitimate target. This was the official reasoning inside
the units. I was told that the unofficial reason was to enable the
soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow
soldiers (something that for years the IDF has not faced during its
operations in Gaza and the West Bank), out on the Palestinian refugees
in the neighborhood. Under the pretext of the so-called “security
threat” soldiers were directed to carry out a pre-planned attack of
revenge on Palestinian civilians. These stories join many other similar
ones that Amira Hass and
I investigated in Operation Cast Lead. The death toll that continues to
rise is steadily reaching the numbers of the massacre of 2009.
More than 1,100 have been killed in Gaza, at least 80 percent of them
civilians. Today it is cleared for publication that at least 4 soldiers
were killed by a rocket in a gathering area outside of Gaza, and
another soldier was killed in Gaza. They join 43 soldiers that have
already been killed. We know that more acts of revenge will come soon
and it is important that we not stay silent. This is the time to take to
the streets and to social media. Demand from your representative
wherever you are to stop supporting this massacre and to immediately
boycott the state of Israel until the occupation ends, the blockade is
lifted and Palestinians will be free. We all want to be in the right
place at the right time when history knocks on our door, and history is
knocking in Gaza right now. You need to decide on which side you want to
go down in history.

Since then, he explains that he has been detained, arrested and
interrogated for nothing more than posting on Facebook. Efrati had both
his Facebook and email accounts blocked, apparently through the
government imposing censorship through his Internet Service Provider
(ISP). Since then, he has further received brutal death threats intended
to silence him further. He describes this update on the first of
August, saying:

In recent days I was arrested by authorities and
questioned about my research regarding the use of illegal weapons in
Gaza, my mail and Facebook accounts were blocked, And I received strong
hints that my life is at risk and I need to be silent and keep low. But
I’m not going anywhere.

They may close my communication channels again,but that does not
mean I’m not here, I’ll find a way to get the information out to you,and
I trust you will echo it on, go down with it to the streets ,And demand
your representatives, your government to stop funding the slaughter in
your name,to boycott Israel and to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. The whole
world is watching now, history is being made.
I’m counting on you.

Efrati is indeed counting on all of us. Silence is what the
Israeli military and State are counting on. Help get the word out. With
more eyes on Efrati’s case, it will be harder for him to be silenced, or
disappeared into a prison cell for nothing other than speaking out
about the illegal activities he witnessed.

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14)Evidence Emerges of Israeli “Shoot To Cripple” Policy In the Occupied West Bank

Israeli soliders use live fire and expanding bullets to shatter the legs of West Bank protesters.

At 10 PM on August 8, a twenty-year-old resident of the Al
Amari refugee camp named Muhammad Qatri arrived dead at the Palestinian
Medical Complex in Ramallah. He had been killed by Israeli soldiers
during a protest near the illegal West Bank settlement of Psagot — shot
through the heart right on the spot on his shirt that read, “Gaza.”

From
the parking lot outside the hospital’s emergency room, a group of men
bellowed chants about the latest unarmed young man to fall before
Israeli gunfire in an usually bloody few weeks. I arrived at the
hospital gates with a colleague and met Dr. Rajai Abukhalil, a
26-year-old resident physician who had just phoned Qatri’s father to
deliver the bad news. Not even midway through his night shift, Abukhalil
was already on his fifth coffee and still awaiting a free moment to
take breakfast.

At a coffee kiosk behind the hospital’s
emergency room, Abukhalil told me Qatri’s body arrived cold. The
soldiers who killed him had apparently delayed his evacuation by at
least an hour, possibly preventing the opportunity to save his life.

Most
disturbing about the killing was how familiar scenes like it had
become. According to Abukhalil, the Israeli army has exhibited a clear
pattern of either shooting to kill or shooting to cripple over the past
six months. Rather than disperse protests with traditional means like
teargas and rubber coated metal bullets, the army has begun firing at
protesters’ knees, femurs, or aiming for their vital organs.

Like
the army’s old policy of breaking the arms of young stone throwers to
deter protests during the First Intifada, the new tactic suggests an
attempt to winnow out the ranks of demonstrators by shattering their
legs. By eroding the front line of protests through brute force,
Israel’s military is apparently trying to undermine the capacity of
Palestinian society to mount an effective new Intifada.

“It’s
very much like the bone breaking policy of the First Intifada but it’s a
more specific and less media attention-grabbing policy,” Abukhalil
explained to me. “No matter how much people want to resist, everyone’s
human. If you get shot or someone next to you gets shot, you won’t be on
the front line at the next clash. And then there will be no front
line.”

Abukhalil said he first witnessed signs of the shoot to
cripple policy in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah. Following the
gratuitous killing of a 15-year-old boy shot in the back
in December by a sniper hiding near his school, protests raged
throughout the camp. As the army cracked down, it began aiming for the
knees of demonstrators, according to Abukhalil.

“Every Friday
we’d have ten to twenty guys coming in [to the hospital] all injured
around the knees,” he explained. He added that many of the wounded
demonstrators claimed to have heard the Israeli commander in Jalazone,
“Hilal,” order his soldiers to cripple as many protesters as they could.

At the 10,000-strong Palestine Authority-sanctioned march
on June 24 from Ramallah to the Qalandia checkpoint separating the
occupied city from Jerusalem, the shoot to cripple tactic was on bold
display. The first twenty injuries doctors at the Palestinian Medical
Complex treated had been shot above the waist — soldiers aimed at their
vital organs. Two ultimately died while others were miraculously saved
despite critical injuries.

“It was shoot to kill at first,”
Abukhalil recalled. “We had eight to ten extremely critical cases. It
was amazing that they made it. One had a bullet in the heart. The other
had a bullet in the major vessels in the neck. Then after the first
injuries it shifted, it was shoot to cripple. We had more than 100
injuries in the femur and the knee.”

By the following day, the
Palestinian Ministry of Health reported a total of 280 injuries, most
from Israeli live fire. Abukhalil told me it took four days for the
hospital’s team of orthopedic surgeons to complete their operations.
“Many of the injured will suffer for life,” said. “They have metal in
their legs; many will definitely have problems walking if not be
crippled 100%. Many won’t be able to run or walk long distances without
pain.”

Doctors at the Palestinian Medical Center have recently begun treating critical wounds inflicted by “dum dum” bullets. Banned
under customary human rights law, the ammunition is designed to cause
extreme damage to tissue by expanding outwards upon entry, thereby
preventing the bullet from exiting.

“You can’t extract it,”
Abukhalil said of the dum dum bullets. “It goes in and explodes and
expands outwards. If you try to remove it you could harm the muscle or
the bone so if it hits the bone you just have to keep it in there.”

Doctors
who had worked at the hospital for more than a decade told Abukhalil
they had not seen dum dum bullets in use since the bloody days of the
Second Intifada in 2000.

For the first time since the beginning
of Israel’s most recent assault on the Gaza Strip that has left over
1900 dead, the Palestinian Medical Center in Ramallah has begun
receiving survivors evacuated from Gaza for post-op care. I met two of
them in the hospital’s recovery ward.

In a bed on one side of a
room lay Majdi Abu Ganima, his right leg badly fractured and swollen
from shrapnel received during Israel’s combined aerial and artillery
assault on the neighborhood of Shujaiya. On the other side of the room
was Waseem Washa’a, also the victim of compound fractures to his legs
inflicted by artillery and F-16 fire during the attack.

The two
young men lay in a semi-sedate state while a few male family members
stood around bantering. Washa’a told me he was wounded in the street
while attempting to evacuate under heavy shelling. He was rescued by
strangers as his home was destroyed by missiles from an F-16, arriving
at Gaza City’s overcrowded Shifa Hospital the same day. His entire neighborhood was flattened and he has no idea what became of his friends and neighbors. He was lucky to be alive.

Still
weary from the trauma he had endured, Washa’a spoke to me in short,
halting sentences. Finally, as our interview concluded, he remarked to
me, “Open up Gaza. End the siege. That’s what I want to say.”

A
“Day of Rage” has been called across occupied Palestine to protest the
continuing attack on Gaza. With protests expected in all West Bank
cities and occupied East Jerusalem, many more may fall in agony before
the barrels of soldiers shooting to cripple.

A
10-year-old Palestinian boy was among the first in new round of
casualties on Friday as Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza after a
72-hour ceasefire.

The truce formally ended at 8 am Friday, at which point Hamas reportedly began firing rockets into Israel, Reuters reports. Israel responded with airstrikes that killed the boy near a mosque in Gaza City, according to the BBC.

In Gaza, the Guardian reports
that "tens of thousands of people who had returned to their homes
during the 72-hour ceasefire rushed back to the UN-run shelters where
many have been staying since the war began more than four weeks ago."

At one school, 800 people who had left in recent days
returned on Friday morning as news of the renewed fighting broke. One
was Nidal Sultan, 21, who had driven with six members of his family from
the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
"We were in the school on the
first day of the ceasefire and came back this morning," he said. "There
were strikes and shelling in the last hour or so. It's not safe, so we
have to come to the school however bad it is. We will stay now until the
war stops.

Egyptian officials called on both sides to
return to the negotiating table, claiming "very limited sticking points"
remain in reaching agreement on a long-term ending of hostilities, according to USA Today.

Palestinian
officials said Friday afternoon that they were willing to resume
negotiations on a new ceasefire. Hamas is calling for an end to the
blockade on Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt and an opening of all the
border crossings to allow the free flow of people and goods. The Israeli
government said in a statement that “Israel will not hold negotiations
under fire.”

In a statement responding to the renewed violence, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed
"deep disappointment that the parties were unable to agree to an
extension of the ceasefire in their talks in Cairo. He condemns the
renewed rocket fire towards Israel. More suffering and death of
civilians caught up in this conflict is intolerable." He urged both
sides to resume a humanitarian ceasefire and "to continue negotiations
in Cairo to reach a durable ceasefire."

1,893 Palestinians have
died, most of whom were civilians and over 400 of whom were children,
and 9,805 Palestinians have been wounded since the latest round of
fighting began in July. Israel's government says 64 soldiers have been
killed, along with two Israeli civilians and a Thai national. Tens of
thousands of Gazan homes have also been destroyed in the bombardment
that has left hundreds of thousands of Gazans dispaced.

WASHINGTON
— Laying the groundwork for an extended airstrike campaign against
Sunni militants in Iraq, President Obama said Saturday that the strikes
that began the day before could continue for months as the Iraqis build a
new government.

“I don’t think we’re going to solve this
problem in weeks,” Mr. Obama told reporters before leaving for a
two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “This is going to be a long-term
project.”

The president repeated his insistence that the United
States would not send ground combat troops back to Iraq. But he pledged
that the United States and other countries would stand with Iraqi
leaders against the militants if the leaders build an inclusive
government in the months ahead.Hours before Mr. Obama spoke, Sunni
militants in northern Iraq ordered engineers to return to work on the
Mosul Dam, the country’s largest, suggesting that the extremists who captured the dam
last week after fierce battles with Kurdish forces will use it, at
least for now, to provide water and electricity to the areas they
control, and not as a weapon.

Prompted by the seizure of the dam
by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, along with the dire
circumstances of tens of thousands of civilians stranded in the
mountains near Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, President Obama quickly
ordered airdrops of humanitarian aid and airstrikes on militant
positions near the Kurdish capital, Erbil.

As ISIS consolidates
its control of territory, it has acted brutally, carrying out executions
and forcing out minority groups. But it has also displayed an intent to
act strategically when it comes to natural resources, highlighted by
the call on Saturday for engineers on the dam to get back to work.

Its
control over the dam, however, also gives the group the ability to
create a civilian catastrophe: A break in the fragile dam could unleash a
tidal wave over the city of Mosul and cause flooding and countless
deaths along the Tigris River south to Baghdad and beyond, experts have
said.The ISIS order came as residents in Mosul reported that nearly two
dozen bodies of ISIS fighters, said to be killed in American airstrikes,
arrived at the city’s morgue, while at least 30 wounded fighters were
being treated at a hospital.

In Baghdad, efforts by leaders to
name a replacement for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite,
stalled, with Mr. Maliki clinging to power and rivals unable to decide
on an alternative. A session of Parliament scheduled for Sunday — when
leaders had been expected to nominate a new prime minister — was
postponed until Monday, as some Shiite leaders rushed to Iran, which
holds enormous power in Iraq, and Sunni politicians visited Erbil to
confer with the Kurds.

“Until this moment, nothing has changed,”
said Kamal al-Saadi, a member of Parliament from Mr. Maliki’s bloc. “We
are sticking with our only candidate, Maliki.”

Earlier, Mr.
Obama had suggested that wider American military support, including an
expansion of the airstrikes, could come if Iraqi leaders formed a
national unity government with meaningful roles for the country’s two
main minority groups, Sunnis and Kurds. Without saying so explicitly,
American officials have been quietly working to replace Mr. Maliki
because they believe that he is incapable of uniting the country to face
the militant threat.

On Saturday, Mr. Obama said an inclusive
Iraqi government would give all Iraqis a reason to believe that they
were represented and help give Iraqi military forces a reason to fight
back against the militants.

His announcement prompted immediate
criticism from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who said in
an interview by telephone from Vietnam that the president’s vision for
the campaign was insufficient to fight “the richest, most powerful
terrorist organization in history.”

The United States continued
on Saturday its efforts to address the crisis in Iraq, as three American
military cargo planes, escorted by Navy F-18 fighter jets, dropped more
food and water on Mount Sinjar to help refugees who fled there under
threat from the Sunni militants.

The humanitarian assistance came after a day of military strikes
by Navy warplanes and Predator drones on ISIS artillery positions. The
planes — one C-17 and two C-130s — dropped more than 28,000 ready-to-eat
meals and more than 1,500 gallons of fresh drinking water, the Pentagon
said. That brings the number of meals delivered to the refugees to
36,224 in the last two days.

In London, Foreign Secretary Philip
Hammond said in a statement on television that Royal Air Force planes
would begin humanitarian airdrops in northern Iraq “imminently.”

Britain
announced Friday that it would support the American relief effort there
but would avoid military action. Britain was a close ally of the United
States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and in operations in Afghanistan,
but its appetite for overseas military deployments has faded. Last year,
Parliament refused to authorize military action in Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons in the civil war there.

ISIS’s
advance northward over the last week appears to be a shift in strategy,
as the group had previously announced its intent to march on Baghdad.
That was stalled when Shiite militias quickly mobilized to defend the
capital.

While ISIS has been the most prominent fighting force of
the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, its gains could not have come without the
support of other Sunni groups, experts say, including fighters aligned
with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is not sympathetic to the
religious extremism of ISIS but is seen as more intent on taking the
fight to Baghdad and trying to topple the central government.

In a recent statement, the Iraqi Baath Party condemned ISIS’s attacks on the Kurdish region, suggesting emerging fissures
in the alliance of Sunni resistance. “We categorically reject the fight
against Kurdistan,” the statement said. “Kurdistan and its government
were a safe haven to all Iraqis.”

The statement added, “We call on all military brigades to move on Baghdad instead.”

As
ISIS went to work securing the Mosul Dam on Saturday, its fighters
appeared to make progress in an battle for control of the Haditha Dam,
Iraq’s second largest, which sits on the Euphrates River farther south
in Anbar Province. Security forces said militants had destroyed a
strategic bridge near the town of Barwana, which government forces had
been using to resupply fighting units.

Within ISIS-controlled
territory, the new American involvement in Iraq has become a rallying
cry. With the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has declared areas
under his control in Iraq and Syria a new Islamic caliphate, calling for
jihad against the United States, imams have called on citizens to fight
the United States.

One preacher in Falluja, which has been under
ISIS control since the end of last year, said at Friday Prayer: “We
know there comes a day to fight the United States. We are ready to march
towards Erbil and Baghdad. The Islamic State will not be defeated and
we are willing to keep pursuing jihad, according to the plans.”

Michael
D. Shear reported from Washington, and Tim Arango from Baghdad.
Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper and Jonathan Weisman from
Washington, Omar Al-Jawoshy from Baghdad and Alan Cowell from London.

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17) A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Renewal of Warfare, a Family in Mourning

“What,
the boy was shelling Israel with this wood?” said a scowling neighbor,
Mahmoud el-Amoudi, 31, pointing to two-by-fours from the scaffold. “I’m
sure Israel will say he killed himself.

“Where is Barack Obama? Where is Human Rights Watch? Where is the free world, just crying on TV?”

GAZA CITY — Sabah Dawawsa was in the kitchen Friday morning, frying
the chicken livers her 10-year-old son, Ibrahim, had requested for the
after-prayer meal. With Palestinian rockets having resumed at the 8 a.m.
expiration of a 72-hour cease-fire, followed by Israeli airstrikes, Ms.
Dawawsa said she had told Ibrahim to stay inside, in their house in
Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

Around 11 a.m., right as
she realized that he had nonetheless gone to play at the mosque under
construction down the street, Ms. Dawawsa heard the drone drop the
missile.

It killed Ibrahim, leaving a pool of blood from his
skull next to a crushed SuperCola can and an abandoned flip-flop. Two
other boys were wounded.

“What shall I say? It was only a few
minutes after he went out,” Ms. Dawawsa, 37, wailed as she clutched a
picture of her son at 5 years old in a camouflage outfit. “It was only
minutes, only minutes.”Hundreds of mourners gathered at another nearby
mosque to pray over the body of the first casualty in the latest chapter
of the monthlong battle that has claimed the lives of nearly 1,900
Palestinians, including more than 300 children, and, on the Israeli
side, 64 soldiers and three civilians. The renewed violence came as an
Israeli delegation left Cairo, where talks toward a more durable truce
had made dubious progress.

Leaders of Hamas, the Islamist faction
that dominates Gaza, had warned on Thursday that they would resume the
battle if their demands to open border crossings, remove Israeli
restrictions on trade and, especially, build their own seaport on the
Mediterranean were not met. Israel had promised to return fire with
fire. Both kept their word.

Gaza
militants launched a rocket toward southern Israel exactly at 8 a.m. —
it was intercepted over Ashkelon — and followed with about 40 others by
midday, according to the Israeli military. Israel, in turn, fired
artillery shells at Gaza’s already destroyed northern towns of Beit
Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, dropped at least one bomb from an F-16, and
struck a home in Gaza City belonging to a Hamas leader, Mahmoud
al-Zahar, and hit other targets in Gaza City, Jabaliya, Rafah and Khan
Younis, killing four people in addition to Ibrahim before 8 p.m.,
Palestinian health officials and witnesses said.

“I was happy for
the last three days — today I felt sick because the cease-fire ended,”
said Amal al-Masri, 45, who bought a small bag of green grapes at the
Jabaliya refugee camp to share among 30 relatives whose home in Beit
Hanoun had been flattened. “We lost everything. If an earthquake
happened here, it would be better.

“I don’t want the war to resume,” she added, “but who’s going to bring back our rights? This is the only way.”

As
news spread that the cease-fire was over, many shops remained open, and
cars and people were on the streets of Gaza City. Groups of teenagers
roamed and men sat smoking on the sidewalks. In the Jabaliya camp, a man
exercised seven camels on a leash, and young boys toted cartons of
supplies on their heads back to the school where their families have
been sheltering for weeks.

Heading north, it grew quieter. In
Beit Hanoun, a ghost town of felled concrete buildings, Anas Kaferna,
25, and his sister and brother were tying thin mattresses and blankets
atop a fading silver sedan. “I don’t want to be the last one in the
town,” he said.

Since the first attack on Beit Hanoun weeks ago,
Mr. Kaferna said they had been staying at the maternity hospital where
he worked as a security guard, though it was also pocked by shelling.
Now they were bound for Gaza City, though uncertain where they would
stay. “It seems the situation will get harder,” he said. “Maybe yes and
maybe no. I don’t understand politics.”

Back at the Jabaliya
market, Amir el-Fassis, 17, and Muhammad Bahtini, 21, said they were
awoken by a drone strike the Israelis refer to as a “knock on the door,”
warning of a larger bombing to follow. It hit a six-story apartment
building under construction next to their home, they said. They
evacuated, but waited in a growing crowd nearby to see what would happen
next.

“They are peaceful people, they sell tomatoes in the
market,” Mr. Bahtini said of the Sherafi family, who own the apartment
building and live on its ground floor. “When it is down, we will say,
‘May God get us revenge.’

“We have suffered, but we can endure
for the sake of having a rest forever after that,” he added, invoking an
Egyptian proverb, heard frequently around Gaza this week, that means,
“Either we live in happiness or all of us die.”

Zuheir Dawawsa,
19, one of Ibrahim’s brothers, said he, too, was awoken by the
too-familiar sound of a drone. He ran to the construction site where,
three months ago, work began on a 13,000-square-foot mosque, called Al
Nour, to replace the one destroyed by an Israeli strike during Operation
Cast Lead in 2008-9.

Neighborhood children told him that his
brother had been among the boys playing there when it was hit. Then a
youth approached with Ibrahim in his arms.

“His skull was open,”
said Mr. Dawawsa, who was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Nothing Is
Impossible,” and could hardly speak. “He was already dead.”

Family
members and neighbors said Ibrahim was an energetic boy, nicknamed
Barhoum, who loved his PlayStation and soccer, like so many others. He
was the second-youngest of eight children from his father’s two wives,
and slept on a mattress in the spacious second-floor salon where his
mother sat mourning on Friday. “He was a good heart,” said a sister,
Raghda, cradling her own 7-month-old daughter. “He was always giving
what was in his hand to others.”

Photographs of President Mahmoud
Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his predecessor, Yasir Arafat,
hung above the women’s heads. In the next room was a map of British
Mandate Palestine, with cities and villages labeled in Arabic. Outside,
the house’s stone wall bore a painted mural of the Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem’s Old City.

At the construction site, men and boys
pointed up at the place where the missile had shaved off a concrete
pylon and sundered the wooden scaffold before, apparently, hitting
Ibrahim in the head. They had found several pieces of jagged-edge metal
shrapnel.

The neighborhood leader, Nasser Abu Raid al-Ghoul, 60,
said he was among about 30 men in the temporary mosque next to the site,
reading the Quran in preparation for the midday prayer, when the
missile hit. They first saw the two wounded boys, and 10 minutes later
found Ibrahim’s bloodied body under the debris.

“What, the boy
was shelling Israel with this wood?” said a scowling neighbor, Mahmoud
el-Amoudi, 31, pointing to two-by-fours from the scaffold. “I’m sure
Israel will say he killed himself.

“Where is Barack Obama? Where is Human Rights Watch? Where is the free world, just crying on TV?”

July 21, 2014 by Daniel Ellsberg

NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning.
Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital
information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado
in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case
probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to
Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being
prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from
even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection
with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton
or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to
“make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison
cell.

I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers
who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US
government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war
crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and
justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public,
at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be
fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential
of new technologies to increase public access to information and
strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders,
rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their
strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress
and justice.

Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These
heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for
doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse
of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act,
never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and
Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future
citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has
already brought comparable charges against Snowden.

The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to
effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning
verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the
longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal
team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board
member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the
way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong
defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people
will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will
contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of
course, is for a just political system and freedom for our
whistle-blowers.

Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times
Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a
compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence
analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the
inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her
personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what
was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t
hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture
detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner
to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure
of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our
government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent
uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the
occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the
US

I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by
Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for
both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I
believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our
country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.

Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to
recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her
education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now
imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their
way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and
extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that
would be for our country and our humanity.

I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last
prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to
whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue).
This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s
sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will
not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure
that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the
appeals process.

Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden
and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a
similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most
critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting
back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to
do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We
can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Returnto Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentenceand For Exoneration —That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.

On
January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with
representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new
evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now
pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming
Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder
and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and
prosecutorial misconduct.

Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office
promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they
merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.

Speaking
to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We
believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a
coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re
going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe
Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on
the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31,
2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).

It
is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the
false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And
just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal
petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie
claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s
Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.

On
December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free
Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and
delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate
freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures
means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is
nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”

This
is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In
January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a
federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient
evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But
after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to
continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not
commit.

This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June
2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and
family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully
convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison?
Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.

In the
words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when
you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”

U.S.
Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to
file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous
declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new
evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s
path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and
federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that
is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.

Stripped
of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new
evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution
and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming
forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal
battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back
for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.

Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom
is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo
Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and
are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly
pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and
the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

—Rachel
Wolkenstein, Esq.

October 25, 2013

For
more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.

Hear
Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”

Go
to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and
how to help.

We
are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the
Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year
renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be
sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a
delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing
on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other
side who have much more money and resources than we do.

So
please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!

LEGAL
CAMPAIGN

Save
CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to
explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and
consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office,
Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already
being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.

The
total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more
than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He
will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start
payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.

PLEASE
HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!

Checks
can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent
to:

16
Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"

American
Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:

California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger
strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary
confinement.

In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a
decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The
Prince."

Gabriel
Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the
last 16 years:

“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,
between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I
have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I
feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”

That’s
why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the
state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic
conditions.

California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and
refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.

Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.

Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur
called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions.
Here’s why:

The
majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely
mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for
violent prisoners)

Even
for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological
reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide

It
jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time
reintegrating into society.

And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their
lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished.
But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep
the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.

Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.

Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly.
The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by
little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.

Thank
you,

Anthony
for the ACLU Action team

P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic
conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They
are:

The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his
formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications
for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.
This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's
pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.

You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters

Posted
1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in
recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists
being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists
know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full
the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The
NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists –
please click here to support the NLG.

We
strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided
below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number
(888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy.
This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the
FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives,
friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are
contacted as well.

You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement
Encounters

What
Rights Do I Have?

Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth
Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the
government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a
non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.

Standing
Up For Free Speech

The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to
disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such
as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that
you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and
other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting
organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and
steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each
person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression
easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up
to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a
"subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI
surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended
FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,
and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance,
infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76
COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of
several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to
expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the
Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.

What
if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

What
if an agent or police officer comes to the door?

Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions.
Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that
your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping
outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or
office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and
then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent
or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the
information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly
harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future.
Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more
opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.

Do
I have to answer questions?

You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to
answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been
arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that
you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you
make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme
Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a
waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your
rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There
is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been
detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer
in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you
reside.

Do
I have to give my name?

As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to
give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and
refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to
your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name
could in some circumstances be a crime.

Do
I need a lawyer?

You
have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you
are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer
present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once
you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop
trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer.
If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to
one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone
number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your
lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able
to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.

If
I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have
something to hide?

Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never
tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated
to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental
right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents
are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining
silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain
silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent
to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to
get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide
you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact
is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone
you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights
and refusing to answer questions.

Can
agents search my home or office?

You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have
and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order
that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a
warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But
you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal
defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can
legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has
the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of
your workspace without your permission.

What
if agents have a search warrant?

If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the
people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the
search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you
are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes,
including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they
searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses
to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them
documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed
in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first.
(Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory
visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant
is present.)

Do
I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?

No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should
affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to
remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to
every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain
silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a
lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.

What
if I speak to government agents anyway?

Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other
questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert
that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.

What
if the police stop me on the street?

Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the
police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being
detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have
reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more
than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep
searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged
with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You
do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not
consent to a search of your bags or other property.

What
if police or agents stop me in my car?

Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you
must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance.
You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds
to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may
separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one
has to answer any questions.

What
if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?

Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You
have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and
their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and
take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as
possible.

What
if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer
their questions?

A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about
information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a
subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they
will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are
threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.

What
if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are
not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and
you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked
to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the
witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used
grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political
organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena
in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and
those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping
("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean
that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense
attorney immediately.

The
government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek
evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This
practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.

Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically
important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who
understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your
political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained
to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of
others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries,
testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political
activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and
investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony,
should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.

Frequently
prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is
prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges
against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the
burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything
you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by
suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.

In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right
to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which
strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of
being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front
of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can
consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.

What
if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?

If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held
in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for
the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular
grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a
total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your
cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare
instances you may face criminal contempt charges.

What
If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?

The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the
purposes of this pamphlet.

?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers
waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you
before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without
reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.

?
Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of
an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard
to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney.
If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration
lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be
barred from returning.

Based
on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the
following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may
change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to
non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying
to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.

Do
I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or
signing any DHS papers?

Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you
have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to
have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do
not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration
proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you
a list of free or low cost legal service providers.

Should
I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?

If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them
with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or
criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization
Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status
will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you
could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers
with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be.
Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.

Am
I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?

If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card
holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your
immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for
more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and
you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems
with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by
the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will
answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to
information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider
refusing to talk to the agent at all.

If
I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing
before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?

Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you
waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal
convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa
waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported
without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief
for you.

Can
I call my consulate if I am arrested?

Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to
have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your
consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your
consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the
right to refuse help from your consulate.

What
happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing
is over?

You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be
barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk
to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.

What
should I do if I want to contact DHS?

Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers
view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of
your options to you.

What
Are My Rights at Airports?

IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion,
sex or ethnicity.

If
I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop
and search me?

Yes.
Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.

Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or
after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?

Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.

If
I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get
off the plane?

The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she
believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision
must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.

What
If I Am Under 18?

Do
I have to answer questions?

No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing
to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some
states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.

What
if I am detained?

If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against
you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no
cost.

Do
I have the right to express political views at school?

Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize
at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those
activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You
may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.

Can
my backpack or locker be searched?

School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they
reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs
or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property,
but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.

Disclaimer

This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if
you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should
also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.

The
following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's

work
since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown

on
Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l

Al-Awda
Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected

over
the past nine years.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl

Support
Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda,
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial

support
to carry out its work.

To
submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to

http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html

and
follow the simple instructions.

Thank
you for your generosity!

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D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:

[Some
of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:

http://bauaw.blogspot.com/
or bauaw.org ...bw]

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Prison vs School: The Tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI

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Checkpoint - Jasiri X

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU

Published on Jan 28, 2014

"Checkpoint" is based on the
oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his
recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of
Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch.... Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_xLYRICSJournal of the hard times tales from the dark sideEvidence of the settlements on my hard driveMan I swear my heart died at the end of that car rideWhen I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheidSoldiers wear military green at the checkpointAutomatic guns that's machine at the checkpointTavors not m16s at the checkpointFingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpointLittle children grown adults or teens at the checkpointAll ya papers better be clean at the checkpointYou gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpointAnd pray that red light turns green at the check pointIf Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpointHe wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpointIt's Malcolm X by any means at the check pointImagine if you daily routine was the checkpointSeparation walls that's surrounding the checkpointOn top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpointBetter have ya permits if your found at the checkpointGunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpointThe idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpointYou enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpointIt feels like prison on a tier at the check pointI'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpointNelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check pointHe stood for free Palestine not a check pointSupport BDS don't give a dime to the checkpointThis is international crime at the checkpointArabs get treated like dogs at the checkpointCause discrimination is the law at the checkpointCriminalized without a cause at the checkpointI'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpointSoldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpointCondescending and real rude at the checkpointDon't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpointThey might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpointSoldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpointGas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpointEveryday you stand to be accused at the checkpointEach time your life you could lose at the checkpointIf Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpointHe wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpointIt's Malcolm X by any means at the check pointImagine if you daily routine was the checkpointAt the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpointThey pulled over our taxi at the checkpointPassport visa ID at the checkpointSoldiers going all through my things at the checkpointSaid I was high risk security at the checkpointBecause of the oppression I see at the checkpointOccupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpointAll a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint

On
Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of
Black Liberation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded

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Fukushima
Never Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU

"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in
north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the
Japanese government.

This
is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power
experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of
the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens
were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order
to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.

The
government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and
then

when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.

It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought
to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal
cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which
built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear
plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the
Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the
voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster
and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new
plants and government subsidies. This film breaks

the
information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and
around the world that Fukushima is over.

Production
Of Labor Video Project

P.O.
Box 720027

San
Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For
information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908

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1000
year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

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Anatomy
of a Massacre - Afganistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded

Afghans
accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

To
see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures

Follow
us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)

The
recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in

mystery.
But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report

confronts
the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

"They
came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common

amongst
the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations

that
Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced

"one
man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious

that
despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising

alarm.
"How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have

weapon
accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the

questions
the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however

is
very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which

means
relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my

hands
on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."

A
Film By SBS

Distributed
By Journeyman Pictures

April
2012

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Photo
of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.